Actian tell us about how their new analytics program is going to make big data projects easier for all of us

The big data pros at Actian have today launched a
brand new analytics platform. Running natively in Hadoop, the Big
Data 2.0 Clear Path Program is designed to get big data projects on
their feet with blueprint diagrams and pre-built workflows. By no
means a little fish in the big data pond, Actian has fast
established itself as an industry leader. Although there’s been no
shortage of creative solutions in the big
data, the Silicon Valley company brought in $138 million in
revenue last year from its analytics services and was listed in
Forbes’ “Top 10 Big Data Pure-Plays”.

Meanwhile, Oracle has unveiled a software tool
that can run a SQL query against Oracle’s own database as well as
Hadoop and NoSQL data stores. But Actian’s CMO Ashish Gupta
believes its new Clear Path Program will make a difference by
helping companies to “maximise the returns from their big data
investments”. We spoke to Actian’s Global Director of Product
Marketing, Christy Maver, about how their new program
scales, and why she thinks it will change how big data insights
are shared within companies.

JAX: What kind of improvements to big data
analytics can we look forward to in the Clear Path
Program?

Christy Maver: The Actian Big Data
2.0 Clear Path Program will accelerate big data analytics by
providing companies with a jump start on their analytics projects.
Specifically it will make it much easier for organizations to get
started with analytics and move existing analytics investments or
projects into production.

What have you done to improve accuracy and
performance?

When organizations stop sampling and add additional
data sources and amounts of data to their analytics programs,
results improve. The blueprints were built to help organizations
solve common business problems with big data analytics. The Clear
Path Program was built to help organizations expand the type and
the amount of data they’re currently leveraging to solve problems
like customer churn.

The Program takes advantage of the Actian Analytics
Platform, which was purpose-built for big data analytics. Accuracy
and performance are our platform’s key value proposition. With
hundreds of connectors that allow you to connect to all available
data sources, you are able to gain more accuracy through your
analytics. The platform was built for speed, at any scale, helping
to compress the time of the entire analytics lifecycle process,
especially around the data preparation (blending and enrichment)
part, with our visual and data workflow engine.

Tell us about the library of blueprints that
the Clear Path Program features?

We are starting with a set of seven blueprints focusing on
customer analytics. We will add to these over time, focusing
on industry-specific analytics challenges. They are used to move
the needle on specific KPIs, around customer satisfaction for
example. They’re also used to show customers how to address
business challenges like customer churn and market basket analysis
and next best action, in a big data environment.
The new release is focussing on customer analytics. What
other areas can Clear Path Program expect to cover in
future?

In the coming months, Actian will release
industry-specific blueprints, including healthcare and financial
services.

What about scalability and future-proof
analytics? Can companies and their data grow with the Clear Path
Program?

Absolutely. The Actian Analytics Platform was built
from the ground up with next-generation software architectures
designed to deliver extreme performance and scalability using
off-the-shelf commodity hardware.

Because the blueprints are backed and designed for the
Actian Analytics Platform, there is potential for unlimited scale
and extreme performance. Companies are able to quickly build,
deploy and test models, even in the short term, while being assured
that they can grow in the long term.

Inaccurate scope and over-ambitiousness is the
main cause of failure in big data projects. Is this somewhere where
Clear Path Program can help?

Inaccurate scope is often caused by not knowing or
understanding the data that is available to you and not knowing how
to use it to your advantage properly. The Clear Path Program gives
companies a way forward in approaching existing challenges in a new
way.

It provides use-case specific sets of methodologies,
reference architectures, diagrams and workflows that serve as the
foundation for getting companies started in using analytics or
enhancing their current use to better optimize their analytics
investment and attain business outcomes.

The Big Data 2.0 Clear Path Program was created by the
Center of Excellence, Actian’s own team of data scientists
chartered with helping expand the reach of data science expertise
to even broader audiences with new analytics areas being rolled out
over the next year. Our data scientists have done that thinking for
customers and put it into the blueprints, which helps to minimize
over-ambitiousness.

In what way do you imagine this new program
will change everyday analytics processes?

It will truly embed analytics into roles and across
the organizations. Analytics projects that are in existence won’t
sit siloed with a single person in the organization, with insights
to share and no one using them. It will change the way
organizations interact with customers and empower business leaders
like CMOs in a way that is absolutely critical as their role
continues to change and they pick up more responsibility for IT
spending.

Coman is Editor of JAXenter.com at S&S Media Group. He has a master's degree in cultural studies and has written and edited content for numerous websites and magazines, as well as several ad agencies. // Want to submit a story? Get me at coman[AT]jaxenter.com or linkedin.com/in/comanhamilton